The paper describing the system was published under a pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto, and people are clamoring to find out who the genius behind the Bitcoin system actually is.

And while there is a mountain of compelling evidence demonstrating that Mochizuki probably isn't Nakamoto, this is still an excellent opportunity to revisit why people are obsessed with the Japanese mathematician — namely, his rock-star status achieved after publishing a bold proof of one of the thorniest problems in Diophantine analysis: the abc conjecture.